Leadership And Post-Bureaucratic Leadership

In this essay, I am going to argue that leadership practices have indeed changed from making work practices more productive to empowering and encouraging workers. I will be presenting the ideas that post-bureaucratic leadership has changed in a way where leadership has become leading individuals rather than what has been called ‘not-leadership’, in managing workers, who are seen as not-human, who are manipulated and used to achieve organisational goals. In Section 1 I will be drawing on Gill (1998), Herman (2007) and Bolden (2006), to present the basis of the differences between bureaucratic leadership and post-bureaucratic leadership. The Second Section will portray the effects of the level of humanity shown to workers by discussing the writings of Dutton (2003), Gabriel (1997), as well as Browning (2007).

The term ‘bureaucracy’s’ meaning was expanded by Max Weber, to include a system of administration. This bureaucratic form was to consist of six major ideals, of a formal hierarchical structure, management by rules, organisation by functional speciality, an “up-focused” or “in-focused” mission, purposely impersonal, as well as employment based on technical qualifications.(Johnston 2004).The Weber focus on simplicity, predictability and procedural rationality is the old style of leadership. Ford furthered this model with his ideals of standardisation and mass production, where simple operations meant leadership was not necessary. This type of leadership is known as “laissez-faire leadership” (Gill,1998), or as Bass (1985) termed it,”non-leadership”. This type of leadership makes creativity and inspiration unnecessary, and will ultimately cause alienation. Another concept related to the old style of leadership is known as ‘Transa...

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... Malden Mills manufacturing plant, rather than taking a $300 million insurance payout for a fire, announced he would keep all 3000 employees on the payroll while the factory rebuilt. This led to almost doubled productivity due to the compassion showed for his workers, as if they were family. However, a non-compassionate response will lead to detachment and eroding loyalty, as seen in the 2001, 9/11 attacks where a publishing company refused to disrupt business proceedings, and regular meetings went on, as little/no support for expressing or sharing pain was given. An employee was called on September 12 when she was late for a meeting because she was trying to help her daughter make sense of the whole event, and was forced to sit through a 4 hour conference call. This non-compassionate response led to “her loyalty to the company eroding with every passing minute”.